LEST WE FORGET

‘Let us be glad that this trial has taken place, that these men will be sentenced.’—William Wainwright in Challenge, March 10, 1938, on the Moscow trial of Bukharin, Rakovsky, Krestinsky and others. (Mr Wainwright's appointment as assistant general secretary of the British Communist Party was announced on January 17.)

98 to 55. Weekend circulation of the Daily Worker, approximately 950 copies, ‘is a decline over the past period’.

In 1955, 14 Daily Worker bazaars were held and raised

£570. In 1957, 9 were held and raised an estimated £380.

Literature sales by branches fell from £1,730 in 1955 to £989 in 1957. Circulation of World News fell from 414 to 255, of Challenge from 318 to 187, Soviet Weekly from 304 to 182, of Labour Monthly from 226 to 128, of Woman Today from 483 to 284. ;

‘The decline in branch sales is a serious political question’, says the report.

Party membership in the district fell from 1,000 in the spring of 1956 to 785 at the end of 1956. Latest registration figure will be given at the congress.

Rutland Boughton, veteran British musician, composer of ‘The Immortal Hour’, celebrated on Thursday his eightieth birthday. :

He joined the Communist Party in 1926 and left it in 1956. Some readers will have noticed the patronizing ‘profile’ of him which appeared in last Saturday’s Daily Worker.

We have pleasure in reprinting a passage from the article ‘How Come These Traitors?’—a remarkable analysis of the causes of degeneration in working-class leaders—which he contributed to the Labour Monihiy for November 1926.

To pay the secretary of a trade union or the editor of a Labour paper a higher salary than the average wages of the men he is intended to serve is contrary to every principle of socialism and common sense.

The theory appears to be that if the Labour movement is to have really first-class officials they must be kept for Labour by the sort.of wage they could get from the boss class. But the boss class can always afford to -pay the highest salaries and “so secure the most éfficiént of théseé men who aré for sale-~ Therefore of such men Labour can in any case only get the ~second best, the men left over when the boss class has had its pick—aunless, of course, a certain number. of very efficient men are actually allowed to put on the livery of. Labour the better to do the bosses’ own work; and in that case it is fully to be expected that they will get a good deal more than Labour pays them.

I don’t mean that such men would receive actual bribes of cash. That would be too obvious and would not properly achieve the masters’ object.

But popular Labour leaders whose ideas are flabby and offer no real threat to the capitalist system may be invited, for instance, to write for the capitalist Press, with great advantage to themselves and.to the increase of a reputation for broadmindedness among the masters.

Or they may be called upon from time to time to act as Labour adviser to capitalist organizations. But under the most favourable circumstances, even when the highly-paid leader is a man of principle, he is unable properly to serve. or represent the workers if he lives at a higher rate than they live.

' The cut of a joint It is not his fault so much as the fault of the workers.who ‘overpay him. A man who gets the cut of a joint every day ‘in the week forgets (if he ever knew) the needs of a man who : lives chiefly on bread and. potatoes.

*: A man who can take his family once a week to the theatre _ cannot understand the intellectual starvation of one who finds 'atchard to afford a daily paper.

Further, if an. official is paid well enough to mix without too much ‘discomfort in circles frequented by the master class, he will be open to another demoralizing influence—to that flattery which is the third cause of official Labour treachery.

When MacDonald got into such a muddle over the forged _ letter I heard a great dramatist remark, ‘He. has fallen a victim to the charming manners of the English governing classes’.

And while the workers will have to take steps to guard against that sort of failure they must not despise too much the men who have failed.

Not one of the workers themselves but would become weakened in moral fibre if day in and day out, year in and year out, he were assailed by the subtle sweetness of pretended and genuine admiration from fair women of fine culture, and by the even more powerful flattery of their men when they ask for advice and incidentally learn many solid and useful facts which lie behind the Labour official’s opinions, the knowledge of these facts being so necessary for the continuance in power of the capitalist class.

This is not a wilful treachery of the official: he cannot help himself in the false position of superiority which a high salary gives him.

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